Credit: Interest Rates

(asked on 29th August 2014) - View Source

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what analysis his Department has made of the performance of credit caps on payday lending firms in operation in (a) the USA, (b) Canada and (c) Australia.


Answered by
Andrea Leadsom Portrait
Andrea Leadsom
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 5th September 2014

The Government legislated to require the FCA to introduce a cap on the cost of payday loans, to protect consumers from unfair costs.

In making this decision the government considered the international evidence in support of a cap. As part of its work to design a cap to meet the needs of UK consumers, the FCA took into account international comparators conducting detailed case studies on experiences of price cap setting in Australia, Canada, US, Finland and Japan. The FCA spoke to international regulators and experts to understand the rationale and designs of price caps, as well as the impact they had on consumers and industry in these countries.

Reticulating Splines